[Pending] Live commercial skip detection (1 Viewer)

[sccrgoalie1]

Hi,

Are you sure this aspect works? I have been testing, and for me, the .txt file for comskip gets created when comskip starts processing the file, but no data is placed in the file until comskip finishes.

So, for a recording that is currently running, it seems that no comskip chapters can be available until the whole file has been processed.

Can anyone confirm that this either works or does not work - specifically the part I am referring to?

Thanks,

Mark

This only works with .xml or .edl files as stated in the OP

 

[elliottmc]

Hi,

Are you sure this aspect works? I have been testing, and for me, the .txt file for comskip gets created when comskip starts processing the file, but no data is placed in the file until comskip finishes.

So, for a recording that is currently running, it seems that no comskip chapters can be available until the whole file has been processed.

Can anyone confirm that this either works or does not work - specifically the part I am referring to?

Thanks,

Mark

This only works with .xml or .edl files as stated in the OP

I do apologise. Tonight is the first time I have tried to use comskip.

Perhaps you can help me a little more, so we can get this fully tested and approved.

I have just set comskip to start when a recording starts, but as far as I can tell, it didn't start at all. Is there anything special I need to do to get this to work? Currently I have suppressed .edl and .xml file creation - is this the cause of my problem?

 

[sccrgoalie1]

Hi,

Are you sure this aspect works? I have been testing, and for me, the .txt file for comskip gets created when comskip starts processing the file, but no data is placed in the file until comskip finishes.

So, for a recording that is currently running, it seems that no comskip chapters can be available until the whole file has been processed.

Can anyone confirm that this either works or does not work - specifically the part I am referring to?

Thanks,

Mark

This only works with .xml or .edl files as stated in the OP

I do apologise. Tonight is the first time I have tried to use comskip.

Perhaps you can help me a little more, so we can get this fully tested and approved.

I have just set comskip to start when a recording starts, but as far as I can tell, it didn't start at all. Is there anything special I need to do to get this to work? Currently I have suppressed .edl and .xml file creation - is this the cause of my problem?

Happy to. Here's what you need to have in your comskip.ini file for live skipping to work.

live_tv=1 ; this tells comskip to output the commercial files while scanning
output_dvrmstb=1 ; this tells comskip to output an xml commercial file

 

[elliottmc]

This only works with .xml or .edl files as stated in the OP

I do apologise. Tonight is the first time I have tried to use comskip.

Perhaps you can help me a little more, so we can get this fully tested and approved.

I have just set comskip to start when a recording starts, but as far as I can tell, it didn't start at all. Is there anything special I need to do to get this to work? Currently I have suppressed .edl and .xml file creation - is this the cause of my problem?

Happy to. Here's what you need to have in your comskip.ini file for live skipping to work.

live_tv=1 ; this tells comskip to output the commercial files while scanning
output_dvrmstb=1 ; this tells comskip to output an xml commercial file

Okay, getting somewhere I think. Is this all I need to add?

I have updated my server with your fixes, set comskip to start at the start of recording, and made these two changes to the ini file.
I also have

delete_logo_file=1
output_edl=0
verbose=0

So, normally I get an xml file with EPG info, which is pretty useful.

I know that comskip has started, because I have the .txt file (empty at the moment) and I do have the xml file, but all it contains is

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<root>
 </root>

so there is no comskip info yet (as expected - only been recording for 10 minutes) and the EPG data has been deleted.

According to the task manager, comskip is no longer running, the txt and xml files haven't been touched, and I am obviously missing something somewhere.

Do I need to change the parameters in SetupTV.exe to be

"{0} -t"

?

 

[sccrgoalie1]

I don't use the built in comskip launcher so I'm not sure how to configure it. Try starting a recording and dropping it on top of comskip.exe. This will tell you where the problem lies. If comskip is configured correctly it will keep running until shortly after recording stops.[DOUBLEPOST=1382047363][/DOUBLEPOST]Reading through the wiki you may also need the donators version of comskip if your recordings are .h264.

 

[elliottmc]

I don't use the built in comskip launcher so I'm not sure how to configure it. Try starting a recording and dropping it on top of comskip.exe. This will tell you where the problem lies. If comskip is configured correctly it will keep running until shortly after recording stops.[DOUBLEPOST=1382047363][/DOUBLEPOST]Reading through the wiki you may also need the donators version of comskip if your recordings are .h264.

No, they are not .h264.

I'd like to get this patch included, but I really think it has to all work fine with the built-in comskip launcher.

No problem if some settings have to be changed for this, but this needs to be documented.

Having a setting that forces loss of the xml file containing the EPG info feels like a pretty serious issue to me. Hopefully as I learn how to use this feature, I can help others and we can sort out the configuration to avoid problems.

 

[sccrgoalie1]

No, they are not .h264.

I'd like to get this patch included, but I really think it has to all work fine with the built-in comskip launcher.

No problem if some settings have to be changed for this, but this needs to be documented.

Having a setting that forces loss of the xml file containing the EPG info feels like a pretty serious issue to me. Hopefully as I learn how to use this feature, I can help others and we can sort out the configuration to avoid problems.

I don't use the built-in tv server that's why I'm not using it. I'll setup the tvserver and launcher on my test system and see if I can figure it out.

 

[elliottmc]

No, they are not .h264.

I'd like to get this patch included, but I really think it has to all work fine with the built-in comskip launcher.

No problem if some settings have to be changed for this, but this needs to be documented.

Having a setting that forces loss of the xml file containing the EPG info feels like a pretty serious issue to me. Hopefully as I learn how to use this feature, I can help others and we can sort out the configuration to avoid problems.

I don't use the built-in tv server that's why I'm not using it. I'll setup the tvserver and launcher on my test system and see if I can figure it out.

Getting somewhere.

I changed

output_dvrmstb=0

and this means that the xml file I have is not over-written.

I also set

output_edl=1

and parameters to "{0} -t"

and now comskip is running in the background while a program is recording.

The xml file still contains the EPG info (not comskip info) and I have a .edl file and a .txt file. Neither of them contain anything but I don't know if there have been any commercials since the program started recording.

However, this all feels like progress.

Early start tomorrow, so I am out of testing time for tonight.

Thanks for your help, and for working on this feature.

Mark

 

[elliottmc]

Okay, last one for tonight. I had a look at the .ts file, and there has been a commercial break. However, the .edl file has nothing in it. Same for the .txt file. I'll check in the morning if the comskip data is added once recording stops, or it may be that this will only work with the .xml file, which would give us a problem.

Or maybe I have picked a channel that comskip is not good at.

If anyone has this fully working with the standard comskip launcher, help would be appreciated.

 

[elliottmc]

Okay, really the last one.

The .edl and .txt files do not get updated until the recording stops.

I assume from this thread that the xml file does get updated, but haven't confirmed this.

However, since MP uses this file for EPG data, needing to use this for comskip info would be a bit of a disaster for most users.

It looks like your branch contains several fixes. Is it possible to separate them out so we can get the benefit of some while this issue is sorted? I really don't think it is an option to say that you can either have your comskip data or your EPG data but not both.

However, none of this is in any way a criticism and I really appreciate the work you have done on this. I just think it needs more testing and a little more work (either on documentation if I am getting this so wrong) or configuration before it can be included in a MP release.